Wednesday, August 10, 2011

OCD's

Having never been in the situation I guess I can’t speak with absolute authority about taxes on the wealthy. I am pretty certain, however, actually I am as close to positive as one can be, that if I were a billionaire, a multi-millionaire, or even a relative poor millionaire, and someone wanted to raise my taxes by three or four percentage points, I would not object. In fact, unless one of my many financial advisors or my personal accountant told me about it I doubt I would even be aware of it. Thus I do not understand this obsession Republicans have about taxes. Is there some correlation between having more and more wealth and greed, such that as you become more and more wealthy you become more and more greedy? What is this apparent deathly fear of taxes, where does it come from, what does it mean? As there seems to me to be absolutely no rational reason for this fear, and even some of the wealthy themselves say they should be more highly taxed, how might one explain the Republican position of no taxes under any circumstances? Surely they are not fearful of losing all their money because their taxes might be slightly raised. I have come to the conclusion this must be a form of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, in simpler terms, a mental disorder. As it is generally not found in such an extreme state elsewhere, I think it must be spread by contagion within the Republican Party. It obviously has to do with the signing, by a majority of Republicans, of an oath to never raise taxes, no matter what (even if the nation is going to fail), though there was no serious or compelling reason to do so (other than a vague threat to run a candidate against whoever did not sign, almost surely an idle threat with only a questionable chance of succeeding). I believe no serious candidate for public office with even half a brain would have agreed to this, but most Republicans did. To put this in even simpler words, it is “sick.”

This obsession with no taxes is related to their other belief that government is “bad.” They not only want to shrink government enough to “down it in the bathtub,” according to some they would like to eliminate government entirely and turn everything over to the private sector. Of course the idea that a nation of 300 plus billion people could survive massive privatization is equally as crazy as their fear of taxes. No human society has ever existed without some form of “government,” even if the governing authority is invested merely in the eldest male or the most successful hunter. Societies have existed successfully without an overriding profit motive, but it is doubtful a society operating chiefly in terms of private profit can survive for long. We have already witnessed the dismal failure of this attempt. The idea that the wealthy and the corporations are necessarily “job creators” has already been exposed as a myth as our recent history has made quite clear.

When our country is in (not impossible but) serious debt, when taxes on the wealthy are at one of the lowest points in history, and corporations are making unprecedented profits, they should not be asked to pay somewhat more in taxes, or give up totally unnecessary subsidies, is absurd, unfathomable, idiotic, preposterous, inane, illogical, irrational, unreasonable and inappropriate, to say nothing but absolutely daft, but that is the Republican position, and they have clung to it as if it were some sort of security blanket. It is so unrealistic there must be some underlying reason for it. I believe there is. It has to do with their equally obsessive desire to make it impossible for President Obama to succeed at anything (governing), including creating jobs or rescuing our economy. It is the main pillar of their stated desire to make Obama a one-term President. To achieve this goal they have refused to cooperate entirely with the Obama administration. An outright assault on a President of this magnitude is unprecedented no matter how much any former (White) President was disliked. The minority party has always accepted its role and however much their views differed from the majority they at least tried to cooperate on the governing of the nation. The current Republican Party with their basically extortionist tactics, their unconcern with the state of the nation and its citizens, their obsessions with taxes, government, and Obama have now brought us to the lowest point in our history. As no one, certainly not the Founding Fathers, envisioned a situation like this, there is no provision for dealing with it other than the next election which may well be too late to correct the damage already inflicted on our nation. Our elected officials, now themselves “privatized,” are not going to help. Our citizens, virtually insensitized, demoralized, and immobilized by years of lies and propaganda may not be up to the task required of them. Wisconsin made a valiant attempt, let us be inspired by their actions and continue to fight the growth of Fascism in our land.

The Afghans are a brave, hardy, and independent race; they follow pastoral or agricultural occupations only ... With them, war is an excitement and relief from the monotonous occupation of industrial pursuits.